Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
I worked at Disney English for two years. I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone. It looks like a sweet gig as a job description but it it is a mess. Beyond the teaching you have to do (imagine 10 classes of about 15 four year old students!) you have to do degrading demo classes, parent-teacher conferences, and have to pressure the parents to sign up for another year. It’s extremely sales-focused. As a teacher, what really alienated me was the fact that the company was willing to hire anyone because they had constant teacher shortages. They used to only hire native English speakers (odd for an English language training program, right? No!) but then they opened it up about a year ago to anyone. The quality of the program went downhill fast. I was teaching with other people I couldn’t even understand. The refunds from parents were outrageous. You do work nights and weekends and it gets old fast. I was like a zombie as I was eating my dinner at 10:00pm on a Friday night and then expected to be in bright and perky by 8:30am on a Saturday.
There are actually 2 Disney English centres in Chengdu. To be honest, you can get equal or better pay at so many schools in Chengdu. It’s a much different market here than in other cities. Disney English makes more sense if you are coming to China for the first time and don’t know anyone. If you are already a local on the ground, you can get a much better job. That’s the main reason I left. I realised that other schools were willing to pay me more because I was professional.
